Imphal Review of Arts and Politics

Advertisements
Dept of Environment and Climate Change

Apparition of Defeaning Emptiness and Other Poems

Apparition

 

The noon permeates

Spreading its deafening emptiness

Exactly 1 o’clock

Like crickets’ plaintive tolls in some far woods, then

The emptiness blinds my sense

And consumes covetously

Burdened by my sadness

The weary body lays flat.

I look around disinterestedly

Far to the corner from the corner of my eyes

The emptiness silhouettes like “babadook”

Thumping its load…dook, dook, dook.

Its crooked hands stretch out

Already caressing my tum

It’s this I’ve been missing all fractions of seconds.

The creature makes way inside me

And I start feeling its fullness

From atom to molecule blood by blood

Oh! It’s a little thing again.

The moaning of the two doves

Sitting near my window

Brings back those forlorn memories.

I know I am still dreaming

The “babadook” just an apparition.

 

 

Hell

 

My memory swarms with pity

As I cross the new land

Old land is no more

The shape of the land changes more quickly,

Alas!

Then the heart of a mortal

When hope like a moth flies to the fire

With its timid wings and burns and dies against the warmth

Drenched by hail and sorrow

The bells of nearby clock cry out

Filling the air with phantoms

Horrified and weeping with misery

Anguish, atrocious, despotic

On my curved skull plants its black flag

I tread on a Chinese shop

The smoke numbs me

The next minute is heaven

As I see everyone’s revelling!

For what? The answer is dumb

Dumb like me like you

I wander in memory lane

Greeting alleged happiness but meet anon

Only sorrow

But this visitation often turns my blood cold

I writhe as cut by sharp-frozen wind

It’s not for fear but for pity

The wind howls like wolves

From every corner of this height

Phantom wings silhouette its dark shadows

Hanging like bats at nights

With no headlight I run helter-skelter

My voice chokes to its pitch…

Squalling for help

The long spooky hands stretch

To squeeze violet-scarred throat

I can’t breathe! I can’t

Acting like a dumped garbage

Alas! It has become of me

And my land.

 

 

Holi

(For a dear friend close to my heart)

 

As I walk down

With my weary steps

Leading to the far seen

Down the vast street

With a heavy heart

As if etherised by my mournfulness

I’ve seen a Spring arrives

Bragging its myriad hues

Rustling its silky leaves here and there

Again,

A thought strikes

Tingling my numbness

Suddenly i remember it’s Spring

The plums, the peaches

The rhododendrons line in straight

All spread everywhere whispering to one another

Are its testimony

And I’ve seen till my eyes blink

Everybody is rejoicing, my friend!

It’s festival of colours, it’s festival of light.

The colours, the flowers, the fire, the laughters, the drunk moods-

They all make a riddle to me

Remind me of my awkward disposition.

As he reposes in this mausoleum

A little twist in the corner of his pale lips

Unsullied in albescent.

In Spring flowers, devoured by the festive fire, with terra firma.

Everything’s dying

So will Spring.

Winter is coming…

 

 

Despair

 

These long indifferent nights

The shattered windows

The immobile weary mortal

Waiting for the last raindrop

The distant wild wind

Whispering despair hopes to the deaf ear

To the untamed heart

See the slow racing moon

Wading to the horizon deep down

Shouldering this last hope

Far away from my eyes

Leaving no trace of its image deep down

The night’s hours are lengthened

It’s shadow is creeping to me slowly

Devouring further and further

It’s too long to sit and wait

Neither the lights start dawning

Nor the sound of the chirping crows

So am I still and alone

It’s too young to slumber, you know

Those weary eyes never cease to open

The long distant shrill of the ships

Sometimes disturbs this lonely night

Also the murmuring voice of night’s whores

But don’t you dare to darn!

It’s all their ways of life

What would it look like if they are absent?

The dirtiest becomes magic and beautiful,

My friend, the true color is out and bright only in this quiet night

To me enters the reeks of the night’s dirtiest

And gobbles you and me in no time

The sick and queasy feeling!

Oh! What’s happening to me, to this city?

Don’t you know this?

My life, my city life!

 

 

Mirage

 

The haunting never ends for him

The nightmarish night sends shivering sweats

Turning him into corpse

The chase drags him into dungeon

Shutting all the doors inside

Let alone a pinhole ray of hope through

Hope, like a Holy Grail

Like hunting with shovel two feet of a rainbow

Hope, an idle fancy, a near impossibility

Disappears into thin air Phantom

For him.

That night’s talk became a prophecy overnight

Nobody knew the masquerade would become

Quite a show

But he only knew why

Since, he acted and was duped

Not once but many a time

Inside the garage, under the roof

Beside the river, deep into the woods

He kept silent all the night

Until the show was over

Why his uncle was arrested?

He recalls how

He hopelessly hid

Never letting her know

The already experienced

How he became a guinea pig

On the monstrous hands

How he failed to respond to her

But…

She taught him what it felt like the first touch

Like the same touch she received from the man

The first hateful breaths

The first hell of penetration!

Rather a naïve unripe girl

Her virginity was long broken

Thrashed repeatedly with an inhuman

Human big and strong whip

Oozing out of the wounded tender hole

The red liquid

Made the girl both victim and promiscuous

Bold enough to pollute him over and over again

And the twice victim

Psychedelic, hallucinatory euphoria

Run into his blood intoxicated

The smoke rises high

Devouring deep into the devil dungeon

Now drowning him down and down

The Phantom will never leave.

Also Read